


A Rather Wonderous Journey Through Wilde Worlds

by EvilStevilTheKenevil



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - High School, Dystopia, Gen, Multiverse, Nightmare Fuel, Nihilism, Surreal horror, Surreal humor, it's complicated - Freeform, longfic, zystopia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2020-07-29 22:40:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20089942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvilStevilTheKenevil/pseuds/EvilStevilTheKenevil
Summary: Nicholas Wilde, framed for murder and sentenced to death, has but minutes to live. That is, until the right man shows up in the wrong place, and makes all the difference in the worlds.





	A Rather Wonderous Journey Through Wilde Worlds

This story was originally published on FanFiction.net (by me), and it is being reposted (is that even the right word?) here for a variety of reasons. I'm still not entirely familiar with this site's interface, so I wish to apologize in advance if something about this story's format is a bit janky.

As for what this story even _is_, well, it's complicated. In early 2017, I encountered a story where Nick and Judy found themselves inexplicably transported to an evil mirror universe, and I ended up bingeing about half of it before I proceeded to spend ten days with no Wi-Fi. While I was offline, wandering the endless alleyways of Madrid, I began to speculate. How did they find themselves in the mirror-universe, and why did it happen at all? Perhaps there was a nebulous group of wanderers, sulking about in the shadows and conducting all sorts of dubiously nefarious inter-dimensional business. Maybe one of their machines malfunctioned, accidentally warping Nick and Judy into a neighboring reality in the process...

Then, I got back from my trip to Spain, and I finally got to read the rest of the story.

I was disappointed to say the least.

So disappointed, in fact, that I turned my speculation into worldbuilding, and wrote this fic largely out of spite. Indeed, this isn't so much a story as it is a plot constructed in an attempt to properly exploit the multiverse as a plot device, while also avoiding my long list of pet peeves, and it _shows_. I'd _had_ it with contrived soap-opera plots revolving around whiny drama queens with _abysmal_ communication skills, so I made my main characters mostly level headed pawns to whom the story just sort of _happens_. Similarly, I was tired of wishy-washy-wooey bullshit written under the assumption that "goddiddit" is a clever plot twist, so expect the protagonists of this sordid tale to be insignificant cogs in the dying, arbitrary machine that is the universe.

In other words, if you're the sort of nihilistic schmuck who considers Arthur C. Clarke's _Rendezvous with Rama _to be a classic of hard SF, and who also loathes the sequels by Genty Lee, then this might just be the story for you. _Enjoy!_

* * *

This is one of the many things that the Wanderer's Unsophisticated Recollection of Events has to say on the subject of The Wilde Incident:

"It was a big fucking mess. Just one grade-A clusterfuck after another, and somehow this guy got off scott-free? We had multiple contaminations, an interversial invasion that he caused, and somehow, a Bellweather got lost, and one of those pesky [REDACTED:insufficient security clearance] got involved, and we _promoted _this guy? I don't think I will ever understand you crazy mammals. Then again, you're a lot more fun than the denizens of v-127, so maybe I will stick around."

END LECTURE

* * *

Tuesday, May 17th, v-294. Downtown Zootopia (well, Zystopia, really):

Nicholas Edmus Wilde had shoplifted before. He was a hustler, a huckster, a shifty sneaky snake-oil-selling sly fox.

Or so the world thought. And so the world hated him.

Sometimes the Pawpsicles sold well, and sometimes they didn't. But whether or not he could afford to do so, he had to eat. Yesterday, they hadn't sold well. And now, on this lovely Tuesday morning, Nick was at a convenience store, buying a cheap ass coffee, and palming an apple into one of his abnormally large trench coat pockets.

"That'll be $2.11"

Nick Begrudgingly paid, his shock collar going from green to yellow, both from the stress of shoplifting, his fear of Mr. Big, who he had some unfinished business with, and from his negative feelings surrounding the spending of what little money he had on something as seemingly trivial as coffee. As he left the convenience store, he noticed the police cruiser.

_OK, don't panic._

Then he saw who stepped out. Judy Hopps.

_Shit!_

Nick wasn't exactly an innocent fox, and Judy was a very infamous rabbit in predator circles. Although Nick was already a tad worried, he was now on the verge of panic. _This has to be a set up_, he thought to himself, as he quickened his pace to get away from Judy.

Judy, who had already made one arrest earlier that day (Emmett Otterton had been caught engaging in pack behavior) and was mentally preparing for the arduous task of filing the paperwork. For that she needed some coffee, and she wasn't in the mood to drive all the way back the the nicer part of town for Starbucks. As she stepped out of her cruiser, she passed by an unremarkable red fox who she would've ignored completely if it weren't for the amber glow being emitted from his neck...

_What's up with him?_

Most chompers didn't just walk around with their collars yellow all the time. Seeing nothing at all unusual in the store that could suggest the fox had company, she turned to find he had subconsciously quickened his pace, as if he was running away.

Now he had done it. He was a fox, in the early morning of a shady part of town, with a yellow collar, running away from a cop. _Guilty._

"Hey you!"

Her words sent electric icicles of fear down Nick's spine. He was subconsciously speedwalking before, but now he was running for his life. And who could blame him? He had heard stories of the ZPD: druggings, torture, declawings (which he could confirm were very, very, painfully real), and even one guy who claimed he had been branded by Hopps herself! That one guy had been drunk _and_ high when he told this story, but Nick, who already hated the ZPD more than life itself, was more then ready to believe it. Confirmation bias and all.

"Get back here!"

Nick's collar went off...then there was pain in his back. The last thing he could remember was lying face down on the cement, the world outside all woozy and fuzzy, already high off the tranquilizer darts.

The next thing he knew, Nick was on a subway car. Of course, it couldn't have been the Zootopian Metro: The car was *far* too clean, all of the lights were working, and the ride was much too smooth, yet it was the Zootopian Metro all the same. Next to him, sat Nick Wilde, who was fiddling with his golden pocketwatch.  
Oh how Nick _loved the luster of gold!_ Even though he'd probably never have enough money to acquire any for himself: He was 30 years old and homeless, with only a high school diploma he had gotten 7 years behind most of his classmates. Finnick was one of his only good friends, and he had considered doing it many times.  
Who could blame him? Zystopia was a depressing place.  
On the night his mother died, he had almost done it.

"Excuse me?"

Nick Wilde interrupted Nick's musings on suicide.

"Could you tell me where I am?"

"We just left central plaza station."

Nick Wilde seemed annoyed at Nick.

"Yes, I know *that*! What I want to know is where we are right now."

It was Nick's turn to be annoyed.

"Zootopia."

Nick Wilde grabbed him by the shoulders. Nick saw that he wasn't wearing a collar.

"No! Where are we?"

"I told you, Zootopia!"

"_Which one?_"

The train arrived at central plaza station. Two more Nick-doppelgangers stepped into the car.

And judging by the rotting, cracked pelt and the shriveled, yellow eyes, one was clearly deceased.

Nick came to in the back of Judy's police cruiser, in cuffs. Somewhen between the store and now, he had been darted, which would explain the trippy dreams. As the sleep-inducing drugs slowly worked their way out of his system, there would be more. But as he would soon find out, Nick's days were numbered.

Nick, you see, had just recently been framed by some unknown character, and recognized by Judy as a wanted petty criminal. So he'd been arrested, and then the "evidence" started pouring in. The case against him was solid. Completely false, as Nick would've, and had told the jury on numerous occasions, but solid. And so perjury was added to the many charges from the judge. Nicholas Wilde never would find out who it was that had framed him for murder.

Of course he hadn't done it! And, of course, they didn't listen.  
The courts never listened to preds. The trials were rigged events, little more than a staged performance to allow prey to pretend they lived in a just society.  
One that had sentenced Nicholas Edmus Wilde to death by electric chair.  
April showers really had brought May flowers, not that he could see any of them.

He remained in his barren concrete cell, contemplating his impending demise and counting down as weeks became days became hours became minutes.

  
His entire life, he had been taking it up the ass from the prey:  
His bullies were prey.  
His teachers were prey.  
His landlords (back when he had enough cash to have one take it all) were prey.  
The cops were all prey.  
The men who had started the war that claimed his father were prey.  
Those bankers who had scoffed at _Suitopia_ were prey.  
Those who had driven society to hell in a handbasket were prey.  
The ruling class, the conspirators, the corruptors: all prey.  
_Fucking prey_.  
They had taken everything: his childhood, his feelings, his parents, and even his claws!  
And now it was June, a prey executioner now guiding him to the chamber in which the wooden monolith stood, menacingly enticing its next meal. It had sent hundreds to purgatory, and would go on to devour hundreds more. Nick was nominally a catholic, but he had never really bought it, and was already dead set on joining the mob by the time his confirmation rolled around.

_Not that it mattered. Just another tool of the preys._

Nick may have _said_ that he was religious. Or rather, he'd been beaten repeatedly until he was too scared to admit, even to himself, that he wasn't. But, deep within, something now told him that this was the end. Consciousness was a flame, and when extinguished, it didn't go anywhere. It was simply gone.  
Nick was terrified, but he didn't try to fight it.  
He had been screwed over by prey his entire fucking life, and to start fighting back _now_ seemed silly to him.  
It also didn't help that he had almost killed himself several times.  
Yet the hadn't done it, perhaps out of some naive hope that it would get better, that the world was a bigger place, and that he would find a way away.  
His favorite childhood fantasy had been nothing more than ripping off his collar and running away through an endless field of tall grass.  
From Zootopia, from the preys, from Judy, who was overseeing this particular execution.  
From everything he had ever known. Once upon a sleepless night he'd been given the chance to do exactly that, but in his fear he'd turned it down. In the end, that was his one regret: staying.

Who knows what could've happened out there? Maybe he would've starved to death in a week. Maybe he would've been a homeless bum who sold his body for a living. Even that would've beaten the life he had ended up living. At least he would've been free, even if only for a brief moment. At least he could've escaped.  
And now, as he faced his death, escape was all he could think about. Ironically, in a way the chair itself was escape.  
Sure, it wouldn't be pretty. Yeah, it was going to hurt like hell, one last time, but that would be it, and then it would all be over.  
In his fear, he'd turned down the chance to run away, and now, ready or not, his escape loomed before him, a door wide open through which he could not go.

Something else out there, however, saw fit to fulfill his desire in a completely different, and far less depressing way.

Nick was brought back to the room from the recesses of his mind by a bright electric flash and a harsh saw-tooth wave echoing around the chamber.  
When he looked up from the floor, he saw the most peculiar thing: A gentlemanly red fox with a white, tapered Mohawk in a cheap black suit who stood in the center of the room, directly between Nick and the electric chair. He smelt of lavender, cigarettes, money, and some cheap perfume, the sort a male predator buys at the last minute to hide the persistent musk of joyous mating from the night before. His face, that of a man who had seen almost everything, was something else altogether, speaking of a being who was both perfectly here in the moment and also hopelessly detached from this world, his head miles above in n-dimensional clouds. His eyes were just slightly bloodshot, as if he was either high as a kite or running on 3 hours of sleep. He held a small metal object in his left hand that Nick glimpsed for a few tenths of a second, and he was reaching for one of his many pockets with his right. He did not have a collar on his neck, although the guards were all too flabbergasted by his entrance to notice this last detail. But he, whoever he was, knew how important the element of surprise could be in precisely this scenario.  
And how quickly it ran out.

He instantly identified Nick as one of his own. As someone he could trust, despite his sketchy reputation and checkerboard past.  
Or maybe _because_ of it.

The warden had relaxed his grip on Nick, and approached the Fox with the Mohawk. This was the basement of a high security prison, so Nick wasn't going to be going anywhere, and this intruder needed to be dealt with. The intruder, meanwhile, saw his chance to act, and took it.

"Hey you, come with me if you want to live."

The Fox in the suit removed a strange silver gun from his pocket that looked more like a bar-code scanner than a weapon, and pointed it at the chamber wall.  
A flickering white rimmed portal opened on the wall, and through it Nick could see a sketchy downtown bar, which the Fox in the suit had already entered.

The others stood there in shock, and Nicholas Edmus Wilde, who we shall henceforth refer to as Nicky, or perhaps Nicky Edmus, ran after him.

* * *

Who the hell is this stranger? Why is Nick's middle name _Edmus?_ Is Judy the _villain _of this story? Who is the Wanderer, whose recollections are sloppy and biased? Who is the unknown person that framed Nicky? How the hell did that stranger find himself in the jail to begin with, and _why the fuck_ is he wearing a Mohawk?

All of that and more in the next few chapters, so stay tuned!


End file.
